Wednesday, August 7, 2013

World's first Test-tube beef burger unveiled

A different (or should I say odd) way of making meat, I doubt I'd ever want to replace the beef in my burger with one.

Besides, meat may not even be an accurate name for it.
If you think it has potential to become 'meat', it must have greater nutritional value than its predecessor. Nah, I'll stick to my real beef burger, for now.

Early this week, Scientists unveiled the world's first lab-grown beef burger, serving it up to volunteers in London in what they hope is the start of a food revolution.

The 140-gram (about five-ounce) patty, which cost more than 250,000 euros (RM1.08 million) to produce, has been made using strands of meat grown from muscle cells taken from a living cow. Mixed with salt, egg powder and breadcrumbs to improve the taste, and colored with red beetroot juice and saffron, researchers claim it will taste similar to a normal burger.

A volunteer said he was expecting the texture to be more soft, adding it was close to meat but not as juicy.

How it is made

Cells are taken from organic cows and placed in a nutrient solution to create muscle tissue. The cells then grew into small strands of meat, 20,000 of which were required to make the burger. Although it is very expensive, the costs of cultured beef are likely to fall as more is produced and scientists claim it could be available in supermarkets within 10 to 20 years.

"Our burger is made from muscle cells taken from a cow. We haven't altered them in any way. For it to succeed it has to look, feel and hopefully taste like the real thing."
- Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

TheGreenMechanics: A very expensive burger, but time will tell if human will eventually shift to eating such edible as we run out of food.